I’m heartened to see a broad disgust with George Will’s lies about climate science. After all it’s pretty extraordinary when a major syndicated columnist repeats a lie about science, not once, not twice but three times despite being corrected.

It’s reassuring to me to see that people are catching on. When we hear pseudoscience drivel, it’s never unique. It always follows a specific method – the pseudoscientific method. We happen to call that method denialism.

I used it to teach denialism and the necessity to be critical consumers of info in my argumentation class today. I had them view files of the articles Will cites, was able to provide the link to CryospereToday’s response, and we walked through the temp data to determine the trend from the last decade (positive). Will’s op-ed was so wrong in so many ways that it set in stark relief the subject of the day. My students got it, with a vengeance! Thanks George!

The column was written in January 2009. Obviously George Will would be relying on late 2008 figures. The anomaly shows an anomaly of roughly -.5 for late 2008. Now look at 1979 and notice that the anomaly declines throughout the year, reaching rougly -1 in late 1979. Mr Will was comparing apples with apples, late 1979 with late 2008.

Alan, Mr. Will was obviously cherry-picking his data in a deceitful manner. The graph clearly shows a broad decline starting in 2004. To isolate a single pair of dates from that graph and use it as the foundation for an argument is grossly deceitful. It’s rather like singling out one citizen whose income has increased over the last year and using that case as an argument to demonstrate that the economy is doing just great. It’s a lie.

The column was written in January 2009. Obviously George Will would be relying on late 2008 figures. The anomaly shows an anomaly of roughly -.5 for late 2008. Now look at 1979 and notice that the anomaly declines throughout the year, reaching rougly -1 in late 1979.

The column was published in February 15th. Will explicitly said the word “now”. The sea ice data are updated daily.

I’m heartened to see a broad disgust with George Will’s lies about climate science. After all it’s pretty extraordinary when a major syndicated columnist repeats a lie about science, not once, not twice but three times despite being corrected.

MarkyMark’s definition of “lie”:

Anything not contained in an officially approved IPCC press release.

PZ wishes he too could just make up his own facts

PZ wishes he could do something he already does on a regular basis? How does that work?

this is just another conspiracy theory on par with HIV/AIDS denialism ( would add anti-vax denialism, 9/11 trooferism, or evolution denialism and every other kind – they’re all ultimately the same

The failure to march in lock-step with the drumbeat of my far-left Warmista agenda.

It’s reassuring to me to see that people are catching on. When we hear pseudoscience drivel, it’s never unique. It always follows a specific method – the pseudoscientific method.

It is indeed refreshing to see that the public is starting to catch onto the hoax that is “global warming” (or “climate change”, or whatever politically correct name is being given to it this week). The pseudo-science drivel being propagated by the likes of admitted liar “Dr.” James Hansen and failed Presidential candidate and internet inventor Albore is starting to get old.

What I find most entertaining about Global Warming Is A Scam’s post is that he quote mined, committed Ad Hominem, identified “George Will” as “the public”, and completely failed to address the purpose of the article, the Washington Post’s failure to fact check properly, and their defense of this failure.
Bravo sir, you truely are a giant among men.

GWIAS, if you have a case to make, please present it. All you have presented so far are a bunch of accusations. For example, you seem to believe that the IPCC reports are not reliable. Could you be more specific? Is there some statement in the latest IPCC reports that you can present a decent case against? I’d love to discuss it.

See, GWIAS, that right there is called “quote mining”. Using a portion of what somebody said to support your agenda without quoting the portion that shows that they completely disagree with you. It is dishonest, unethical, and exactly what I’d expect from a denialist like yourself.

How DARE I use other people’s words against them! Especially when those words cast any negative light at all on the religion of global warming, or on Herr Führer Hansen. This should be a capital offense!!!

Using a portion of what somebody said to support your agenda without quoting the portion that shows that they completely disagree with you. It is dishonest, unethical, and exactly what I’d expect from a denialist like yourself.

Lancer’s definition of “denialist”:

Anyone who does not goose-step down the strasse to the rhythm of my far-left warm-monger drummer at least thrice daily

Wow. Such mature discourse. Do you even consider that someone could disagree with you without being a “far-left warm-monger”? Of course not. You and your ilk are losing as reality slowly sinks in. You know it. All you have left is flinging poo like a three year old having a tantrum.

LanceR, GWIAS isn’t interested in mature discourse. “Flinging poo” is sport for him/her. And while we all know we shouldn’t feed the trolls, it’s very hard not to take the bait and respond lest it seem like we are conceding.

Wow, Lancer, no real content in that comment, just flinging poo like a three-year-old. Such mature discourse. Oh, I get it: you’re projecting. How typical of a Warmista religious fundamentalist! Entertaining to watch, though, at least for its futility.

Do you know the approximate forcing expected from our current levels of CO2 in the air? Do you know how that relates to the expected forcing of H2O? How about an easy one; what reflects more light, white snow and ice or dark earth?

LOL. How do you know there’s been warming on Mars? After all we don’t have temp stations on Mars. Oh yeah, that’s right we know because the models show that the changes in albedo would equal temp change (the same ones, BTW, used to model the Earth’s atmosphere). Idiot troll.

LanceR has already given excellent answers to all of GWIAS’s questions, but I’d like to offer some variations on those:

” Why should we automatically believe the conclusions of those whose livelihood is entirely dependent upon exactly which conclusions they reach?”
We shouldn’t. We should read the relevant scientific material and decide for ourselves. Have you read any of the IPCC reports?

“(4) What is the optimal temperature of the planet?”
The current one, in the sense that climate change is bad because all of our infrastructure is built around the assumption that the climate will not change.

“(5) How do you know with absolute certainty that the negative effects of “global warming”, if it is even occurring, will outweigh the positives?”
We don’t know anything with absolute certainty, but that doesn’t stop us from making big decisions based on limited information. The Bush Administration invaded Iraq without absolute certainty that Iraq represented any kind of threat to the USA. [I’m guessing that you support the decision to invade Iraq.]

“(7) How do you explain the recent increase in the Antarctic ice cap?”
This is not correct. The most recent data clearly show a loss of ice in Antarctica. Until recently, the best estimate was that the mass balance was probably negative (losing ice), but there was a small chance that it was positive (gaining ice). However, the most recent data has resolved the question and now we know that the mass balance is negative.

No comment on all the other answers? Just gonna latch onto the one that nobody could understand? Thought so…

Professionally muzzled, you twit. Media interviews do not make science. His supervisor (a political appointee) edited his reports to make them fit with the administration’s agenda. They did not let him attend at least one, perhaps more, conference. That’s what he meant by “muzzled”.

On a more personal note, do you really not understand this? If you would just ask, and drop the Nazi crap, you might actually learn something.

Just for the benefit of all reading these comments, GWIAS has commented on multiple science blogs in the last couple of days. It’s always the same standard denialist garbage, free of any science, facts or logical argument. Just the same bad puns about Al Gore and the same comparison of James Hansen to Nazis.

Any attempted discourse with him/her is a waste of time.

Que. a rabid screed about how I’m “marching in lockstep with warmists, Hitler and Al Gore” (or something) in 3… 2… 1…

Its amazing how he can repeated lie spread false facts dressed up as knowledge. Responsibility should be taken if you really care about your field.

Fred Smilek is the acting president of the Society to Save Endangered Species. It was founded two years ago by Fred Smilek along with his two best friends Charles and Jonathan. http://www.fredjsmilek.com

I don’t understand some of the outrage. In January, the arctic climate research group at UI published an article noting that global levels of sea ice at the end of 2008 were roughly identical to global levels of sea ice at the end of 1978. The university stands by this assessment: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf

Has Will committed some terrible sin by using data from the beginning of this year in a mid-February article?

Are people here really upset that George Will uses month old data? Or is the problem that his data supports conclusions you don’t agree with?

Santer et al 2008 showed that Global Climate Models are consistent with the tropospheric warming that had been observed up until 1999. That’s good to know (especially since most of the models were created after 1999). But if you take the methods in Santer et al 2008 (authored by 17 of the leading pro-consensus experts and published in peer reviewed literature) and plug in the data through 2007 or 2008 (your choice) then the IPCC global climate models are proved false with high statistical significance.

Are people who talk about the predictions in the IPCC report but fail to mention that they have been disproved doing something wrong?

Or is science a sufficiently fluid thing that some leeway (probably more than a month) should be provided to people who discuss it?

Jason, the primary objection to Mr. Will’s use of the U of I data is that it is misleading. It’s rather like an analysis of current economic trends zeroing in on the undeniable fact that Joe Schmoe in Kokomo got a raise today, and insinuating that the economy is doing just great. Yes, Joe Schmoe’s data point is contrary to the general average, but that doesn’t provide an argument that the economy is doing well.

In the same way, the claims you make with respect to the U of I data are completely contrary to the overall thrust of the data. Nobody looking at all that data can honestly come to any other conclusion than that the polar regions are warming. Cherry picking one data point out of all that data is so misleading that, in my book, it constitutes an outright lie.

Global warming presentations routinely leave years after 2000 or 2005 off of their graphs. Of course the earth has gotten cooler during those missing years
No, it has not; your statement relies on ignorance of scientific measurements. The problem arises from the statistical nature of fluctuations in the measurements. Our measurements of the earth’s temperature are not universal; they encompass only a tiny fraction of all the points on the earth’s surface, in its atmosphere, or deep in its oceans. So what we’re measuring is really just a poorly representative sampling of the earth’s temperature.

Here’s an example: suppose that we wanted to know if people are driving their cars more now that the price of gasoline has gone down. Unfortunately, we can’t monitor the driving habits of each and every driver, so instead we plop ourselves down at the side of a well-travelled road and count how many cars pass by every minute. If we compiled all the data for, say, the three hour period from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM, we’d probably “discover” that car usage is steadily going down — but that would be wrong because we’re seeing rush hour traffic, not the amount of driving due to gasoline prices. To see the effect of gasoline prices, we’d need a lot more than three hours’ worth of data.

OK, so we take two days’ worth of data: Sunday and Monday. Oh no! People are driving much more with the passage of time! Wrong. We’re looking at another phenomenon here, the weekly change in driving due to commuting.

OK, so we take months of data. Only then do we get data appropriate to the question we’re asking. That’s the key idea: the data range must be appropriate to the hypothesis you are testing.

Climate change is not an eight-year phenomenon; it is a phenomenon stretching out over decades. So if you want to use temperature data to examine whether the earth’s climate is changing, you need to look at a lot more than just eight years’ worth of data. You need to look at decades’ worth of data. And when you do so, the results are clear: the earth is warming.

if you take the methods in Santer et al 2008 (authored by 17 of the leading pro-consensus experts and published in peer reviewed literature) and plug in the data through 2007 or 2008 (your choice) then the IPCC global climate models are proved false with high statistical significance.

Again, the time scale of the predictions is what matters. If I predict that it will be hot this summer, and we get a cold snap in June for a day or two, does that mean that my predictions are all garbage? Of course not. We have to take the average result over an extended period of time. How long? There’s actually a way to calculate that, but I won’t drag you through the calculation. For now, suffice it to say that eight years or ten years is nowhere near long enough. Think more like 30 years.

Are people who talk about the predictions in the IPCC report but fail to mention that they have been disproved doing something wrong?

Here you’re using very loose language. What do you mean by “predictions” that have been “disproved”? They have already discovered that Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than their earlier estimates. So the IPCC reports have been disproved, right? You’ll need to be more specific here.